Mr. Speaker, I always like to listen to the hon. member when she speaks about her part of the world. She makes eminently good sense. I commend her for the enthusiasm with which she supports her constituents and in particular on some of the natural resources development like the proposed pipeline and the diamond mines. That is perfectly legitimate. It is the kind of thing I would expect any member of parliament to do.
I would like to ask the hon. member opposite whether she has thought about other parts of the budget and in particular the increase in Human Resources Development Canada. In this area there is roughly $1 billion and economists have done some estimates as to how much it really costs in terms of the output. If we put a number of dollars into the job creation scheme the assumption is that jobs are actually created. What is not said is how many jobs are lost or what output costs are attributed to each of these job creation schemes.
The job creation schemes have to be paid for through tax increases to someone. People are paying additional taxes to pay for these job schemes. Where does it come from? Economists have estimated that the $1 billion has cost Canadians $520 million, over half of the $1 billion.
Could the hon. member address this issue? It has been addressed by people like Jim Mirrlees for example who won a Nobel prize recently in developing the optimum taxation theory. I wonder if she could comment on that.